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We are Shoreline and Lake Forest Park residents who strive to provide you with news and information about the area in which we live and work. We cover Shoreline, Lake Forest Park, and some events and destinations in surrounding areas.

Monday, October 28, 2013

State Sen. David Frockt and State Rep. Gerry Pollet say that advisory votes, like the five on the November statewide ballot are confusing and easily taken out of context.

Frockt cites Advisory Vote No. 4, which reads as follows:

Advisory Vote No. 4 Senate Bill 5627

The legislature imposed, without a vote of the people, an aircraft excise tax on commuter air carriers in lieu of property tax, costing approximately $500,000 in its first ten years, for government spending. This tax increase should be:

REPEALED _____

MAINTAINED __

Frockt said last week that the ballot title takes the bill out of context.

“The advisory vote regarding commuter air carriers was essentially a tax swap -- trading one form of taxation for another -- that was either revenue neutral or marginally net positive (something like $400,000 over 10 years, as I recall),” he said. “Kenmore Air is the main beneficiary due to decreased paperwork it will have to file with the Department of Revenue even if they end up paying slightly more. They supported the change, and it passed with no controversy and strong bipartisan support. To me this was a non-controversial technical change that was necessary and the kind of thing that voters elect us to do in a representative system.”

He added, “The advisory system, certainly, as to something like this, is highly confusing and described without full context.”

Rep. Gerry Pollett said Monday that he agrees with Frockt.

This and the four other non-binding advisory measures on the November ballot are required by what was not ruled unconstitutional in the Tim-Eyman-sponsored initiative that required a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to hike taxes.

A recent Everett Herald editorial noted that in the state's first-ever advisory votes in 2012, Washingtonians rejected ending a tax break for large banks and extending the fuel tax paid by oil refineries.

The five so called Tax Advisory Votes are a taxpayer funded anti-tax push poll put on the ballot by Tim Eyman's Initiative 960. The specific wording of the ballot title was stipulated by Tim Eyman in Initiative 960, not the State's Attorney General, and are intended to sway voters to oppose the measures. Yet each of the five measures were adopted almost overwhelming by both Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature earlier this year. The ballot title's are meant to deceive the voters. See http://budgetandpolicy.org/schmudget/201cpublic-advisory-votes201d-on-november-ballot-are-tailored-to-deceive